Small blue bottle on a shelf in the kitchen
holds one grape hyacinth
I plucked from a neighbor’s lawn.
Each day I watch the tiny thing die.
This is what I do when I come to the sink.
This is my document of observation.
First the little purple poufs at the bottom fade slightly
then slowly collapse like balloons running out of air
at an excruciating, slow pace.
I can almost hear the air whistling out
a miniscule breath, imperceptible.

The process moves up the stem
row by row of inedible miniature grapes:
the fading color
indigo to pale periwinkle
invisible pinprick that makes no pop but lets out the air
and withering carries on
until the lowermost grapes become raisins
so tight you think they cannot curl into themselves
even a tiny bit more but they do
the whole while an inaudible wheeze–
Exhale.
This gradual dying.

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Exercise in Draining

I am training
to squeeze (absorb?)
information
from where it
is plenty
or scarce.

Sometimes it
will build up
so that I
almost burst
and I would
for certain
if you caught
me off guard.

So I get
information,
I hold it,
and then learn
to drain it
properly.

What do you do when it feels like there’s too much information coming at you?

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Initiatories and ICHP*

*Intra-Perioneal Hyperthermic Chemotherapy

I spend Friday mornings in the temple whispering in white, calling down the powers of Heaven to cleanse and prepare women for the bounty God has eternally in store for them. I am awed by the initiatory. Although I bristle with some phrases which seem like artifacts of another century, as a whole I am astounded by the intimacy, love, preparation, protection and embrace of that aspect of the temple. The thoroughness of that kind of cleansing is unlike any mortal life can offer.

Its closest competitor is something my husband endured in 2007.

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A plain looking thing
fat disk
of oil and lye
forced to sit and cure

becoming
something permanent
it may not have chosen
for itself

but holding it
between my palms
feels right
subtle thing

under warm water
bumpy rotation
awkward lather
it becomes ethereal.

by Brooke

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My new little one.

by Alisa

Twelve days ago, I gave birth to my first baby. As I labored in the hospital, I was aware that I would be missing my dear oldest friend’s great big birthday bash that night. Diagnosed eight months ago with neuro-endocrine cancer, my friend recently learned she probably has less than six months to live. Deciding not to wait for her birthday later on in the year, a huge party was organized in her honor.

While I am overflowing with joy at the birth of my son, and the birth of my motherhood, I hardly know how to begin to say goodbye to someone who has always been there with me, through nursery, primary, junior high and high school, boyfriends, weddings, and more. I am struck by how seemingly polar opposites can hit our lives at the same time.

The Trimurti

I wore a necklace throughout my pregnancy
A trinity charm, swirled into one
Creator, Sustainer, and Purger

For all three sometimes come at once
As they often do at a birth, I suppose.
I crouch upward—breathing, pushing, exhaling
With all I have and more, then sink back,
Eyes shut, catching my breath
All of the moment in my heart.

I smile then—truly
Because I know nothing but love and intensity
For this baby boy

While I lay there
Another birthday is celebrated—
Really, it isn’t exactly her birthday
But if you had less than six months
You’d celebrate early too

Thirty years, her last milestone.
Shiva, do you know you take a mother of five babes?
What do you want to purge? I dare not ask why.

The Creator smiled on us that day twenty years ago
She and I sat over our cross-stitch, two merry misses
When Mother called from two houses down
To witness a birth
My calico calm, near serene, purred her kitten into life
With her hypnotic humming

And I, struggling to do things right
Hastened to tie the thin, red thread around the chord,
When he began to chirp, hardly a mew.

The Sustainer is come to stop time.
I never watch the ticking clock
And open my eyes with ecstatic surprise,
When they place his wet, slippery body on my chest.
And the weather is so mild

February forgot its season
At my back door a crocus pushes its tender leaves upward
Childhood is not unlike motherhood: tenderly aware of only now

Motherhood is not unlike the yoke
Of rainbow connections and pulsing sensations
I love, I feel, I know, I heal
As we vibrate to the lullaby
I sing in the key of present tense

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